Deeplinks Blog

During the week of March 25, the European Parliament will hold the final vote on the Copyright Directive, the first update to EU copyright rules since 2001; normally this would be a technical affair watched only by a handful of copyright wonks and industry figures, but the Directive has become...

Emails Prove ICE Could Access Data from Orange County Shopping Malls, Despite the Companies' Denials In response to an ACLU report on how law enforcement agencies share information collected by automated license plate readers (ALPRs) with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, officials have been quick to denyand...

Australia passed a law saying it can order anyone, in broad and vague circumstances, to give secret help to the Australian government in decrypting some information. Even people outside Australia can supposedly be ordered to do this. What should the free software community do to defend itself from this threat...

Ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal last summer, consumer data privacy has been a hot topic in Congress. The witness table has been dominated by the biggest platforms, with those in lockstep with the tech giants earning the vast majority of attention. However, this week marked the first time that...

EFF is deeply saddened and disturbed by the massacre in New Zealand. We offer our condolences to the survivors and families of victims.This horrific event had an online component; one gunman livestreamed the event, and it appears that he had an active and hateful online presence. Enforcing their terms of...

Update: This bill was greatly improved with amendments, but EFF still was unable to support it. Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed H.B. 2730 on June 2, 2019. A bill introduced in Texas threatens the free speech rights of 28 million residents by making it easier to bring frivolous lawsuits...

Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a new “privacy-focused” direction for the company that, while sounding great in theory, also set off several alarm bells—including concerns about competition as the company moves to make its messaging properties indistinguishable from one another. As usual for Zuckerberg, it’s all...

We urged the Florida Supreme Court yesterday to review a closely-watched lawsuit to clarify the due process rights of defendants identified by facial recognition algorithms used by law enforcement. Specifically, we told the court that when facial recognition is secretly used on people later charged with a crime, those...

Last month, we asked EFF supporters to help save Alice v. CLS Bank, the 2014 Supreme Court decision that has helped stem the tide of stupid software patents and abusive patent litigation. The Patent Office received hundreds of comments from you, telling it to do the right thing and apply...

Recognizing the year’s worst in government transparency The cause of government transparency finally broke through to the popular zeitgeist this year. It wasn’t an investigative journalism exposé or a civil rights lawsuit that did it, but a light-hearted sitcom about a Taiwanese American family set in Orlando, Florida, in the...

No excuse is needed to celebrate the civil rights icon Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. But this weekend is an especially appropriate time to recognize his contributions to First Amendment jurisprudence, and the inextricable link between modern free speech law and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. This link...

In his latest announcement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg embraces privacy and security fundamentals like end-to-end encrypted messaging. But announcing a plan is one thing. Implementing it is entirely another. And for those reading between the lines of Zuckerberg’s pivot-to-privacy manifesto, it’s clear that this isn’t just about privacy. It’s...

It’s time to talk about the future – how technology developers and companies can successfully move beyond the surveillance business model focused on tracking and selling data about their users. Trump, Cambridge Analytica and the growing scope of cybersecurity crises have been a wake-up call to the public, tech employees...

Join us for our third annual exploration of the fascinating, obscure, and trivial minutiae of digital security, online rights, and Internet culture. It’s the ultimate technology quiz crafted by EFF experts and hosted by our very own Cybertiger Cooper Quintin.Bring your friends (or make a few new ones)! We'll form...

When the FCC announced its intention to repeal the 2015 Open Internet Order, Americans spoke up. When the FCC ignored the fact that most Americans support net neutrality, Americans spoke up again, asking Congress to reverse the FCC’s decision. And the Senate listened. This fight continues in...